Page 60 of Wrapped with a Beau

Her fingers fly over the keys.

Elisha: Guess you fell asleep! You have the right idea, I have work tomorrow ugh. Anyway, good night! xx

She’s about to turn the screen dark and go to sleep when he starts typing again.

Ves: Then I’m honored you chose me to date.

She blinks her fuzzy eyes at the screen. That’s it. No banter. Just a solid statement of fact.

He probably assumes she’s not looking at her phone anymore, because he follows it up with another message immediately.

Ves: Good night.

No x’s or emojis. She’s learned that’s not his style.

Once, she might have thought he was uptight, reserved, far too cool for her liking. But now she knows better. He’s honest to a fault, and always means what he says.

Elisha: My parents have been hounding me to invite you over for dinner.

She frowns, then deletes and retypes the whole thing.

Elisha: Oh, with everything going on, I almost forgot! My parents wanted me to invite you to come over for dinner tomorrow. I’d love it if you came. DON’T FREAK OUT, OKAY? It’s literally just a fam dinner. Low stakes, great food.

He answers at once.

Ves: Thank your parents for me and tell them I accept the kind invitation. Sleep tight, Elisha.

And a second later—

Ves: xxx

Chapter Thirty

Ves

Ves is positive that the only thing more uncomfortable than dinner with his own family is dinner with someone else’s.

A long-held belief that he has revised just once over the years at the many family functions he’s spent with Arun and his large extended Indian family. But no matter how loved he’s made to feel, or how many delicious and syrupy gulab jamun they always pile his bowl with because they know he’s adored the deep-fried Indian dessert since childhood, he’s not actually family, is he?

Arun’s mother may kiss his cheek and call him son, but it’s Cade who has formally joined the Iyers, not him. The next time he sees them, he knows it will be different. He knew it the night of Arun and Cade’s sangeet, when, with a bittersweet pang, he wondered if he would ever again fit into someone’s family. The feeling of being the odd one out persisted through the singing and the dancing, and later that night, when he removed the ice-blue and silver kurta and churidar, it seemed to reinforce that he couldn’t keep this family any more than he could keep his own.

Even though Ves knows that nothing good can come of getting attached to Elisha’s family, he still wants to make a good impression. So he buys an expensive bottle of wine from the liquor store as a hostess gift and braces himself for a night of dancing around awkward questions about his own relations. Now here he is with their daughter, on their stoop, too chickenshit to ring the bell.

“Why are you being so fidgety?” Elisha asks, reaching up to unbutton the top of his dove-gray dress shirt.

“Whenever I’ve met a girlfriend’s parents, it’s...” He’s hesitant to meet her eyes. “Never gone well.”

“Then it’s just as well that I’m not a girlfriend,” she says firmly. “It’s just dinner, and you’ve already met two-thirds of my family. Now stop worrying. You’ll get premature frown lines.”

Personally, he thinks it’s a bit too late for him; he’s already sprouted a few white hairs since meeting her, but when he pointed it out, she’d retorted that his hair was platinum, so how could he tell, anyway? Sounds like girlfriend logic to him—she’s always right, he’s happy to let her think so.

“I wish you’d showered and gotten changed,” he says, eyeing her outfit. “I feel overdressed.”

She’s in the same black leggings and oversize sweatshirt she wore to help him move furniture around after work. It says hot chocolate and christmas movies in faded lettering, a graphic of a VHS and an anthropomorphized mug filled to the brim with marshmallows holding hands. It’s... creepy. Or cute. He can’t decide.

She pooh-poohs him. “It’s winter, I barely sweat. Anyway, I told you it’s a casual family dinner. I don’t know why you ironed your trousers and tucked in your shirt. Now ring the bell.”

“Why me?”

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